The hysteria now created by the ANPC communication about chickens dyed with yellow dye is only a finding of forgetfulness by Romanians, but it can also be politically speculated news. About this toxic practice, the press also reported years ago, and images of chickens discoloring in water were also posted on the Internet by housewives and television stations.
Although it is said on TV or written on websites that Romanians no longer buy chickens or chickens since the news delivered by ANPC appeared, I think it is an exaggeration. I have seen and have information that people buy from stores and whole chickens and chicken legs or chicken pieces. The price has dropped, but not so much because of the dyeing hysteria as because it is fasting and many Romanians do not touch meat.
If you search the internet, especially on the Youtube channel, you will find images of yellow chickens that, when put in water, discolor. Some videos are similar to those presented by Horia Constantinescu, the president of ANPC. For credibility, I chose to point you to a news broadcast by Pro Tv four years ago, when chickens and chickens painted yellow and sold as birds raised by farmers with organic food, especially corn, were spotted in Galați.
It was obviously a scam, but the practice was (and probably still is) used in several areas of the country. There are old news that show that birds dyed with food dyes were also sold in stores, but allowed in the meat industry because they are not dangerous for the body.
Painted chickens. What the police discovered in Galati, 4 years ago
In 2020, in a market in Galați, the Local Police agents caught several merchants who were selling chickens and chickens with the skin painted yellow, deceiving their customers that they were birds raised in farmers’ yards.
In the presence of the sellers, the local policemen washed several chicken carcasses, which they confiscated, and samples of the water that turned yellow were to be taken for analysis.
The Galati Local Police then communicated the method by which extortion sellers deceive their customers. Buy poultry meat from wholesale stores, where it comes frozen (from the country or European states) and at a low price. “They are frozen, they are thawed, I take them home, I put them on the stove for a bit so that they look burnt, after which food coloring is used”, said a policeman.
The illegal business of dyeing chickens brought traders important profits. In large chain stores, frozen chickens were sold for 6 lei per kilogram. After they are “transformed” by using dyes, the price doubles or triples.
The sellers caught with the painted chickens in Galaţi were each fined one thousand lei, at that time.
The opinion of a specialist in the food industry
Petru Alexe is a researcher at the Faculty of Food Science and Engineering in Galati and specialist in meat technology, author of several inventions in the food industry. He was consulted by the Pro Tv reporter after the action of the local police in the Galati square.
Specialist Petru Alexe said that painting chickens and chickens is dangerous, their meat can cause illnesses. “It can become much more vulnerable to microorganisms when an operator would try to color the surface of the meat as it would bring an additional risk of inoculation of some microorganisms. Action must be taken immediately because we don’t even know if that yellow dye is a dye in the area of allowed dyes,” said the researcher.
This signaled by Petru Alexe proved to be valid at this time as well, because the dyeing of chickens that ANPC recently announced came as a result of the discovery of some batches of meat infested with salmonella. However, as researcher Petru Alexe said, meat can be easily contaminated with microorganisms when it is thawed and colored.
Just today we published the intervention of Paul Anghel, the general director of the Market Control and Supervision and European Harmonization Directorate of ANPC, who came up with new explanations about the “painted chicken”. The director also announced that several batches of chicken were withdrawn from sale after ANPC inspectors found meat contaminated with salmonella.
